2/2
Except the way they were describing themselves did sound like another way. Closer to how it should be. People watching each other's backs against the bigger threat. Keeping each other alive, not by paying tithes to the higher-ups, but by being smart and watching out for each other. It had appeal. Family wasn't a word that had much meaning to him, blood being as thin as it was where he was from, but the concept wasn't foreign. People who gave a shit whether or not he lived or died. That was why he'd set out looking for Sophie. Certainty that even in a world full of corpses, she would.
Assuming she wasn't a corpse, herself, of course. Big assumption there. She might have gone rattlesnake, but it was more likely she'd found herself caged in with worse. Marcus wasn't sure about these people or their family pitch, but he thought he could at least tell where they were coming from. At least they seemed aware of what was going on around them, which was also a far sight better than his last bit of company. Duggar had been manic, possibly insane, with his two sycophants willing to at least pretend to be on board for the party. These two were being reasonable.
“Could use a place to fucking stay,” he admits; an obvious statement, but an honest one. And a fucking purpose is the part he leaves unsaid, not trusting either of these strangers to understand the devastation of having been necessary once, having a place where he'd been appreciated. Valued. That shit had been a drug to him, and the hope of attaining that again had kept him from being prey in the last few weeks. “Don't mind earning it, but I don't need a fucking suit to tell me how. You got a lot of people here?”